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Sheernox Technology GroupDocumentation

Customize alert messages

A notification template sets the sender, subject and message of the alerts a contact receives. Every contact uses Default Template until you choose another. Custom templates are useful when an alert goes to someone outside your team, such as an emergency request to the company that runs your server.

Create a template

Section titled “Create a template”

  1. Open Contacts and select Notification Template, then Add New Notification Template.

  2. Give it a Template Name you will recognise, such as Reboot request.

  3. Under Content, choose Custom.

  4. Edit the fields:

    • From: the sender. Use your own email address if the recipient should be able to reply to you.
    • Subject: for example URGENT: #DEVICENAME# is #STATUS#.
    • Message: the text of the alert. Type the tags from the table below where the details of the outage should go.

  5. Select Save.

Then edit a contact, or add a new one, and choose the template under Notification Template. See Set up downtime alerts.

Tags

Section titled “Tags”

Tags are replaced with the details of the outage when the alert is sent. They are case-sensitive: type them exactly as shown.

Tag Replaced with
#DEVICENAME# The website’s name, or the server’s name, address and port
#WEBSITENAME# The website’s name (website tests only)
#WEBSITEURL# The website’s URL (website tests only)
#SERVERNAME# The server’s name (server tests only)
#SERVERHOSTNAMEIP# The server’s hostname or IP address (server tests only)
#SERVICENAME# The service checked, such as ping, HTTP (Port 80) or POP3 (Port 110) (server tests only)
#SERVICENAMESHORT# A shorter form, such as ping, port 80 or port 110 (server tests only)
#STATUS# DOWN or UP
#DATETIME# The date and time of the outage or recovery
#TIMEZONE# Your account’s time zone, such as US/Eastern
#STATUSDETAILS# The error found (DOWN alerts) or how long the outage lasted (UP alerts)
#NOTES# The notes you entered for the website or server

Example: send a reboot request automatically

Section titled “Example: send a reboot request automatically”

  1. Create a template called Reboot request. Set From to your own address and the Subject to URGENT: please reboot #SERVERNAME#.

  2. In the Message, include everything the provider needs to act: #SERVERHOSTNAMEIP#, your account or server ID, and what you want done.

  3. Add an email contact with the provider’s emergency address and choose the Reboot request template.

  4. On that contact, untick UP Notification so the provider only hears about outages, and set Notify to after 2 consecutive errors or more so a brief network blip does not trigger a request.

  5. Under Receive Notification for, tick only the servers that provider looks after.

Section titled “Related”